year
he obeyed the sentence, he did not take it much to heart, feeling
himself far superior to his judges, who, he knew, could not get along
without him, and in the end would have to come to him; for he is the
most virtuous of them all, and therefore knows the commands of Tata
Dios better than anyone else.

It is to him that I owe a good deal of what I know about this
plant-worship, as well as several songs used in the cult. He came
often to see me, and one day told me in confidence that the hikuli
in my possession would have to be fed before they started on their
long journey to the United States; for it was a long time since they
had had food, and they were getting angry. The next time he came he
brought some copal tied up in a cotton cloth, and after heating the
incense on a piece of crockery he waved the smoke over the plants,
which he had placed in front of him. This, he said, would satisfy
them; they would now go content with me, and no harm would come to
me from sorcerers, robbers, or Apaches. This was a comfort, for to
reach Chihuahua I had to pass through some disturbed country, and
there were rumours of a revolution.

It seems that at present only the districts around Nararachic and
Baqueachic get hikuli from its native country, and that all the others
procure it from these two. Until recently the people of Guachochic
also went to fetch plants, and a few may yet undertake the journey. One
old man showed me some hikuli which he had gathered thirty-five years
ago. At Nararachic they use hikuli all the year round, that is, as
long as they have corn, because "hikuli wants tesvino." The people in
the barrancas are too timid to go on the expeditions, and they buy the
plants at the price of a sheep apiece. The purchaser holds a feast,
not only when he brings the demi-god to his home, but also a year
after the event. In the eastern section of the country, and in the
foothills around Rio Fuerte, hikuli is not used at all. It is very
rarely planted by the Tarahumares; the only instance I saw of it was
in Tierras Verdes.

A significant light is thrown on the antiquity of the cult, as
well as on the age of the tribe itself, by a certain variation in
the ceremonial which I observed in the southwestern part of the
Tarahumare country. There it is the custom of the shaman to draw
underneath his resonator-gourd a mystical human figure in the sand,
and to place the hikuli in its centre. Regarding this mystical figure,
my